Montreal Nationals and Berlin Bears Battle for Global Poker League's First Championship
The Montreal Nationals play the Berlin Bears today at 2 p.m. to determine the first-ever champion of the Global Poker League.
The two teams earned their spots in the final after a season that began in Los Angeles with the GPL Draft. Twelve managers picked teams of four and then two wildcards before play began in April. Through a season of six-max sit-and-gos and several heads up matches, eight of those teams made the playoffs.
Day one of the playoffs was for the Americas Conference champion. The Montreal Nationals entered the day as the GPL's overall points leader. They beat the San Francisco Rush, despite falling to 0-2 and then defeated the LA Sunset in six games.
Day two determined the Eurasia Conference champion and the Berlin Bears entered as the third seed in the Conference. If they Bear had been in the Americas division they would not even have made the playoffs. That didn't stop the Bears from taking out the higher seed Hong Kong Stars in their first playoff match. Brian Rast went through the entire day undefeated, but the Bears also picked up key wins from the other members, including Bill Perkins who closed out the round one matchup. They then defeated the Eurasia Conference's top-seeded Moscow Wolverines in seven games.
Rast continued his dominant day and eventually took out Wolverine manager Anatoly Filatov in the deciding game to put the Bears into the Final.
The final will be a best of 11 match, with teams selecting each player in secret. Each player on the three-person roster will have to play a game before they can play another game. It all goes down in the GPL cube today at 2 p.m.